- Morning Devotional
- November 13,
2005
"You're Rich"
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As Jesus continued on toward Jerusalem, he reached the border between Galilee and Samaria. As he entered a village there, ten lepers stood at a distance, crying out, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" He looked at them and said, "Go show yourselves to the priests." And as they went, their leprosy disappeared. One of them, when he saw that he was healed, came back to Jesus, shouting, "Praise God, I'm healed!" He fell face down on the ground at Jesus' feet, thanking him for what he had done. This man was a Samaritan. Jesus asked, "Didn't I heal ten men? Where are the other nine? Does only this foreigner return to give glory to God?" And Jesus said to the man, "Stand up and go. Your faith has made you well." (Luke 17:11-19 NLT).
It won’t be long and the tables will be set and families gathered to celebrate a wonderful time of thanksgiving. I know that I am more and more reminded of how much we have received this year, even though it may be one of the hardest years we have experienced in a very long time. I recently read the following excerpt from Reader’s Digest. It gave me pause and caused me to return to a spirit of thanksgiving. Perhaps it will help you as well.
William I, who conquered England some 930 years ago, had wealth, power, and a ruthless army. Yet although William was stupefyingly rich by the standard of his time, he had nothing remotely resembling a flush toilet. No paper towels, no riding lawn mower. How did he get by? History books are filled with wealthy people who were practically destitute compared to me. I have triple-tracked storm windows; Croesus did not. Entire nations trembled before Alexander the Great, but he couldn’t buy cat food in bulk. Czar Nicholas II lacked a compound-miter saw. Given how much better off I am than so many famous dead people, you’d think I’d be content. The trouble is that, like most people, I compare my prosperity with that of living persons: neighbors, high-school classmates, and TV personalities. The covetousness I feel toward my friend Howard’s new kitchen is not mitigated by the fact that no French monarch ever had a refrigerator with glass doors. There is really no rising or falling standard of living. Over the centuries people simply find different stuff to feel grumpy about. You’d think that merely not having bubonic plague would put us in a good mood. But no, we want a hot tub too. Of course, one way to achieve happiness would be to realize that even by contemporary standards the things I own are pretty nice. My house is smaller than the houses of many investment bankers, but even so it has a lot more rooms than my wife and I can keep clean. Besides, to people looking back at our era from a century or two in the future, those bankers’ fancy counter tops and my own worn Formica will seem equally shabby. I can’t keep up with my neighbor right now. But just wait. 1
Our reading is so clear. It asks the question, why did only one cleansed leper return to thank Jesus? I have developed nine thoughts in response:
§ One waited to see if the cure was real. § One waited to see if it would last. § One said he would see Jesus later. § One decided that he had never had leprosy. § One said he would have gotten well anyway. § One gave the glory to the priests. § One said, “O, well, Jesus didn’t really do anything.” § One said, “Any rabbi could have done it.” § One said, “I was already much improved.”
Only the tenth was thankful. Which will you be this year?
1. Condensed from Home, David Owen, in Reader’s Digest, July, 1996, p. 193
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